Recurring themes raised throughout the consultation

Most respondents who responded to the consultation were
generally supportive of the Equally Safe Delivery Plan and what it
was trying to achieve (between 59% and 67% agreed with the actions
listed under the 4 priorities and the cross cutting actions).

However respondents could see a number of ways to improve the
Equally Safe Delivery Plan. When asked what was missing, what could
be added, many of the same themes recurred. These themes related
to:

Who it should cover – more emphasis is required around
intersectionality and the additional vulnerabilities faced by
women with certain protected characteristics.

There needs to be a greater emphasis on children, and more
clarity that both boys and girls are covered by the plan.

What it should cover – there was a repeated criticism
that the plan focussed too much on domestic abuse, rather than
covering the full spectrum of violence against women. In
particular it was felt that stronger actions were required around
commercial sexual exploitation (
CSE), whilst childhood sexual abuse and
stalking were not mentioned at all.

There is a greater need for engagement and partnership
working, too often the
SG alone was
listed in the "who" column for taking actions forward.

There were are a number of comments relating to the delivery
of the plan, including the need for sustained funding and
resources, the need to link the delivery plan to other
SG policies and
strategies and
UN conventions, and the need for monitoring
and evaluation.

A number of comments were made about the wording of the plan
– often it was commented that actions needed to be stronger
and go further, and that more detail and clarity was required,
along with comments that more medium and long term actions were
required.

There were comments relating to the management of the
delivery plan and ensuring that action happens at a local
level.

Some of the recurring themes relating to who it should cover
(all women, all children) and what it should cover (all forms) are
discussed in more detail in the cross cutting section of the
analysis report.

Generally supportive of Equally Safe

A number of respondents commented that they were supportive of
the Equally Safe delivery plan and what it aimed to achieve.

"We believe that Scotland has in many ways led the way
internationally in addressing violence against women and girls. We
should be ambitious in our vision for Scotland and what we can
achieve. We consider that the draft delivery plan forms a base to
build on to realise this vision."

- Third Sector

"Overall, the Equally Safe strategy is an extremely positive
move by the
SG and demonstrates
the commitment to tackle and eradicate violence against women and
girls (
VAWG)."

– Third Sector

Who it should cover – all women

Some respondents felt that more needed to be said in relation to
the intersection between gender and other protected
characteristics. Women might be more likely to experience violence
or abuse as a result of these characteristics, to face additional
barriers and therefore require additional support. It was also
mentioned that different interventions might be required across a
woman's life course from girls/young woman up to older age.

Particular groups of women where it was felt more focus was
required included:

Those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or
intersex(
LGBTI)

Those who have a disability or learning disability

Those from black and ethnic minority (
BME) communities

Those with no recourse to public funds (
NRPF) due to their migration status

Those with English as a second language

Women in poverty

Those who have been looked after

Those affected by commercial sexual exploitation (
CSE)

Those with caring responsibilities

"Additionally, the injustices experienced by women socially,
culturally, economically and politically are inextricably linked to
their experiences of race, disability, gender identity and
sexuality; this should be kept in mind throughout the strategy and
considered with every action detailed."

- Third Sector

"[Our organisation] sees a clear understanding of
intersectionality as central to developing actions which fully
address the needs of women and girls with learning disabilities,
who face multiple barriers as a result of both their gender and
learning disability."

- Third Sector

It was suggested that the priority 3 actions should be more
inclusive of
LGBTI people, minority ethnic women and women
with learning disabilities as these groups can face additional
barriers to accessing support.

"There are many barriers to accessing services for anyone when
experiencing abuse, but for
LBT women there are often double barriers. Many
LBT women experiencing abuse are apprehensive
about approaching a specialist women's only domestic abuse service
for support, as they presume the service will only offer support to
heterosexual women, and/or fear they will be met with homophobia,
biphobia or transphobia and that staff may not understand
LBT specific abuse. Fear of being 'outed' and
confidentiality issues can also be barriers for
LBT women accessing support for abuse."

- Third Sector

"This is underpinned by the recognition that women and girls
with learning disabilities experience particular barriers in
reporting and escaping violence, and the lack of targeted,
accessible information means they are rarely aware of support
services available to victims of gender based violence."

- Academic/Research

Who it should cover – all children

As discussed under cross cutting actions, it was felt that
children were not integrated enough into the delivery plan. It was
also suggested that the language used could make it clearer that
children of both genders are included throughout the plan.

At priority 3 it was felt that there should be a stronger focus
on children and young people affected by violence and abuse and
supporting and protecting them.

"Although children and young people are identified as a priority
group in this section there is a lack of actions that relate to
providing support for them whether that be through public services
or third sector support. If not mentioned specifically there is the
potential that the focus may be lost."

- Violence Against Women / Gender Based Violence Partnership

What it should cover – all forms of
violence

A recurring criticism was that the delivery plan focussed too
much on domestic abuse, and did not mention other forms of violence
against women enough, this was particularly the case at priority
4.

"[Our organisation] welcomes the inclusion of actions that will
help tackle perpetration of domestic abuse in this section of the
Delivery Plan, but we believe that identifying and holding
perpetrators to account in relation to other forms of
VAWG
should be strengthened in this section."

- Violence Against Women / Gender Based Violence Partnership

Some respondents felt that reference to specific forms of
violence were missing and called for the inclusion of Commercial
Sexual Exploitation (
CSE) (including prostitution and internet
pornography), honour based violence, childhood sexual abuse, and
stalking. In addition it was noted that gender based violence can
be directed at men within a
GBT relationship, as well as acknowledging that
men can be victims and women perpetrators of violence.

"Given that one of the objectives for Priority 1 is 'Individuals
and communities recognise and challenge violent and abusive
behaviour' there could be more specific actions in relation to the
different forms of violence against women and girls. For example,
the delivery plan would benefit from actions which seek to improve
community responses to
FGM and other
forms of honour-based violence… Specific actions for
specific forms of violence against women are necessary to ensure
that the delivery plan is effective and meaningful."

- Third Sector

Engagement and partnership working

One of the criticisms of the Delivery Plan was that often the
Scottish Government alone is listed in the "Who" column for taking
actions forward. A number of respondents stressed the need for
collaboration and wider engagement and partnership working in order
to successfully achieve the aims of Equally Safe. It was felt that
it was important to say how the work of wider partners fits with
the Delivery Plan and make it clearer that it is not for the
SG alone to drive
the Delivery Plan forward.

Groups that respondents felt should be included, and be more
involved with Delivery Plan included:

The wider public sector, including;

Local Authorities

Health Boards

Community Planning Partnerships

Health and Social Care Partnerships

Police Scotland

Scottish Prison Service

Scottish Courts Service

Education Scotland

Skills Development Scotland

Scottish Funding Council

Colleges

Higher Education Institutions

Scottish Children's Reporter Administration (
SCRA)

COSLA,
Scottish Social Services Council

Scottish Qualifications Authority (
SQA)

The Care Commission

Child Protection Committees

The Family Courts

The Judiciary

Crown Office

Violence Against Women partnerships

The third sector

Parents, families and the wider community

Employers, including those in the private sector

Trade unions and representative bodies

Schools and teachers

Young people

Faith groups

The voices of women and children with lived experience of
violence

Other Equally Safe work streams sometimes need to be
identified and included in the work of other priorities.

"Priority 1 contains a comprehensive list of achievable and
worthwhile actions. It is noted, however, that the overwhelming
majority of objectives are to be achieved by Scottish Government.
This may lead some organisations to underestimate their own role in
driving this agenda forward. Consideration may wish to be given to
identifying other relevant bodies to include within the 'Who'
column"

- Other Public Body, including Executive Agencies,
NDPBs,
NHSetc.

"recognise the significant contribution
VAWPs
make to this priority [priority 1] and support their endeavours by
working in closer partnership with them"

- Violence Against Women / Gender Based Violence Partnership

"Approaches to prevention work are multi-faceted; there is no
one size fits all. Working in partnership is the only way forward
with all partners equally committed and working to their
strengths."

- Violence Against Women / Gender Based Violence Partnership

"the importance of public sector agencies, communities, and
individuals is diluted and largely absent. We consider that
detailing more specifically their contribution would strengthen the
delivery plan, and clarify the ways in which we all have to own
this issue."

- Other Public Body, including Executive Agencies,
NDPBs,
NHSetc.

"It is critical that all key partners and stakeholder
organisations are engaged in the delivery of the action plan if it
is to be successful. Not only because the delivery plan requires
engagement with broad range of expertise to succeed, but also
because resource allocation and accountability for Equally Safe
needs to visible beyond Scottish Government."

- Third Sector

It was felt that parents, families and the wider community have
a role to play in influencing the attitudes of children and young
people.

"there is no specific action around Childhood linked to parental
awareness raising. The impact of actions in the educational setting
will be limited if the home environment remains unchanged."

- Third Sector

"Children and young people have many influences on their lives
which shape their understanding of safe, healthy and positive
relationships. Although the education system has a pivotal role, we
believe that this section would be improved by widening its focus
to consider the role of families and communities."

- Other Public Body, including Executive Agencies,
NDPBs,
NHSetc.

In relation to priority 3 it was felt that the third sector have
a wealth of experience in supporting women and children affected by
VAW, and that
this should be utilised, for example when training staff in the
public sector on recognising potential signs of abuse.

Local level activity will be required to successfully deliver
Equally Safe.

"
VAW partnerships
coordinate prevention activity, service provision, resources,
training, policy and commitment at a local level. As the delivery
plan stands at the moment, local areas are not required to do very
much. This is a huge missed opportunity."

- Violence Against Women / Gender Based Violence Partnership

Delivery

It was felt that long term sustainable funding and resources,
including staff, would be required to effectively deliver Equally
Safe. There were concerns of additional pressures caused by public
sector spending cuts.

"It is important that
VAW continues to
be resourced at a time of funding constraints across statutory and
3rd sector organisations.
VAW needs early
intervention, partnership working and service user involvement.
There is the potential to make an enormous difference to women and
children's lives if we deliver services better at an earlier
stage."

- Violence Against Women / Gender Based Violence Partnership

"To do any plan justice it needs to have resource attached to
it. Failure to do this, results in fragmented services that lack
cohesion and good outcomes that make a difference to affected women
and girls."

- Violence Against Women / Gender Based Violence Partnership

Areas where it was felt that funding was required included: to
support actions taking place in schools and colleges and in the
community; the rolling out of the "Safe and Together" model;
supporting Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (
MARACs);
appropriately supporting and funding organisations and workforces
involved in early intervention and prevention work; providing
funding for projects across Scotland so that access to services is
not a "postcode lottery"; to increase participation; and providing
and funding specialist services to support women exiting
prostitution.

"It is essential that actions to ensure early and effective
interventions recognise the necessity of having the right workforce
in the right place, with the right skills at the right time. The
provision of adequate sustainable funding for these services should
also be reflected within the actions."

- Representative Body for Professionals/Trade Union

"There are currently 11 local authority areas delivering
CEDAR across Scotland, funded primarily through
the Big Lottery Fund. While this investment is very welcome, there
is a need to ensure that these services are embedded and sustained
in the longer term. Moreover, there is a need to address the
postcode lottery that currently exists in Scotland by ensuring that
all children are able to access specialist domestic abuse support
through
CEDAR regardless of the local authority area
that they live in."

- Other

"Concern about the impact of public spending cuts, particularly
at local authority level, placing undue pressure on support workers
and public services - making it much harder to deliver successfully
on cross cutting initiatives."

- Representative Body for Professionals/Trade Union

It was seen as important that the Delivery Plan learned from and
drew upon existing strategies, rather than being delivered in
isolation. Therefore relevant existing strategies and how they
could link with Equally Safe should be referenced in the Delivery
Plan. Existing strategies that respondents felt linked with Equally
Safe included:

"It was noted that there are already a lot of strategies in
place for engaging with/ supporting different groups of people and
we should be learning from and utilising these rather than
developing new plans."

- Violence Against Women / Gender Based Violence Partnership

"All too often valuable equalities work is done in isolation
minimising its impact and often duplicating effort. In particular,
we would implore the Scottish Government to ensure that Equally
Safe is implemented in line with the commitments and policies set
out in the Race Equality Framework for Scotland 2016-2030"

- Third Sector

It was seen as important that action on the Delivery Plan is
co-ordinated across government, relevant organisations and
VAW partnerships,
rather than operating in "silos".

There were suggestions that more evidence, research and data
were needed, to look at evidence gaps around preventing violence
against women, and service provision, to better understand the
risks faced by certain groups, such as women with learning
disabilities, and to understand "what works" for women at different
stages in their life.

It was felt that there was a need to monitor and evaluate the
actions in Equally Safe, so that their impact could be monitored
and reported on. It was felt that measurement would be required at
both a local and a national level. It was also noted that some
actions were considered "vague" which would make it hard to monitor
their impact.

"More focus is needed on ensuring that actions are sustainable
and are achieving their intended impact. There is a need to ensure
that progress in implementing the delivery plan and monitoring the
impact actions are having at a local and national level is measured
and reported back to
VAW Partnerships,
CPPs and
the Scot Gov."

- Violence Against Women / Gender Based Violence Partnership

Wording of the Delivery Plan

There were a number of comments around the wording of the plan
– a number of which called for more detail and clarity around
certain actions. There was a feeling that the Delivery Plan should
be more ambitious, and that some actions should be strengthened and
go further. There was a desire for more medium and long term
objectives, many of the actions referenced were short term and did
not go beyond 2019. There was also a call for the actions to be
more outcomes focussed rather than process focussed and for them to
be
SMART (specific, measurable, achievable,
results-focused, and time-bound). It was commented in the cross
cutting section, that the delivery plan did not make it clear how
the
SG would meet
international obligations under
UN conventions.

"The 'actions' included within this section of the plan are a
little vague and are not very 'action oriented'. It is not made
clear how progress will be made, by when and how it will be
measured… The actions included appear to be less about a
'delivery plan' and more about what currently takes place. The
focus tends to be on 'considering', 'discussing', and 'looking at'
rather than acting. In terms of the timescales - there are very few
medium or long-term actions - most of the actions are for
2017-18."

- Violence Against Women / Gender Based Violence Partnership

"We believe that there is a need for the delivery plan to be
much more ambitious than it currently is. Equally Safe sets out a
long-term vision for preventing and eradicating
VAWG so
it is disappointing to see that the majority of actions in the
delivery plan are either pieces of work that are currently on going
or will be completed over the coming 12 months."

- Violence Against Women / Gender Based Violence Partnership

"We support the Government's commitment to holding events,
engaging with stakeholders, taking forward programmes and
commissioning research, however we are concerned that these are
insufficient to affect the required change and - though worthwhile
- they are not a commitment to tackle the form of gender based
violence they relate to."

- Third Sector

The scope of the plan was questioned by some, who felt that
priority 2, which focussed on wider gender inequality, would sit
better in a separate strategy. It was felt that the focus and the
actions in priority 2 were too broad, and would not, in the short
term, tackle the violence against women that women are experiencing
now. It was commented that there might be a need to prioritise
certain actions.

"By overemphasising the bigger picture of women's equality this
priority becomes too broad and the strategy fails to create and
develop achievable and measurable objectives that address violence
against women and improve women and girls safety in Scotland
today."

- Third Sector

There was also a request for a broader definition of gender
based violence to be used that would better include all children
and young people, as well as acknowledging the gender based
violence that young gay, bisexual or transgender men face. There
were calls for better consistency of language to make it clear that
children are included.

"We have commented in other answers that we are not always clear
whether actions in individual priority areas apply across all forms
of gender based violence and include consideration of children.
This concern is sometimes exacerbated by inconsistent use of
language – in places the delivery plan refers to women, in
places to women and girls and in places to women and children and
it is not always clear whether these differences are deliberate
choices due to the focus of a particular action. While the delivery
plan does state at the beginning that the definition of violence
against women and girls does include children or all genders, it
would still perhaps be clearer to use "women and children" as the
default form throughout the delivery plan unless actions are
specifically focused on a particular group within this."

- Third Sector

Management and accountability

There was a feeling that there needed to be some sort of
mechanism in place for ensuring that high level actions were
delivered locally, and that partners were held accountable. It was
felt that guidance of what was expected at a local level was
required. It was felt that local partners should be required to
report annually on their progress.

"We would caution that this plan does not get lost in its
implementation. To facilitate this we would recommend all publicly
funded organisations receive directives from key public sector
agencies and/or Ministers that highlights how they are expected to
implement Equally Safe and that this be built into the Performance
Monitoring framework."

- Third Sector

"From a public health perspective we support Equally Safe at all
levels, and particularly in relation to promoting equality and
prevention. However, although we recognize that this is a strategy,
which is rightly tackling these issues at a governmental level, we
would appreciate guidance on how the actions can be supported
and/or delivered at a local level."